


Down the Mountain

by kolis10



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: But main relationships will still be there, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Murder, Mystery, Not A Fix-It, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory, Suicidal Thoughts, Team Bonding, Wendikids AU, but some things end up getting better, the kids can shift between human & wendigo forms, what that means for them mentally is up for debate, with my own little twist ;)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 04:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9531899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kolis10/pseuds/kolis10
Summary: Eight teens went up the mountain one night..Only one survived Until Dawn..One week later, eight teens come back..Down the Mountaina.k.a. my take on the Josh Lives, Wendikids AU





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever contribution to the UD fandom, since I only recently played it & I hope you all enjoy. I'll admit this chapter is kinda slow, but it's more about diving into the characters' mindsets.

“This isn’t gonna work”

Josh paces up & down the living room of the cabin. Mike lounges on the sofa with his arm around Jess who’s lying back against his chest. Chris & Ashley are snuggled in a similar position on the loveseat. Surprisingly Matt & Emily are leaning against walls on opposite sides of the room; no one knows what went on between the two of them but they’ve been acting really weird around each other & everyone’s noticed. Finally there’s Sam who sits cross-legged on a cushion in front of the coffee table. All of their clothing is dirty & torn & covered in dried blood.

All of their eyes are on Josh.

With only a look shared between them Ash untangles herself from Chris, who walks over to his panicking friend with his cheerful smile & pats Josh on the shoulder.

“Hey buddy, you gotta calm down or you’re gonna walk a ring into the hardwood.”

From this close Josh can smell the blood & meat on his best friend’s breathe. They’d been out hunting earlier; Josh didn’t wanna guess what they’d caught.

“We’re better now; we can control ourselves” Chris continues.

And Josh can’t help but laugh at that one.

“Control yourselves?” hysteria begins to seep into his voice, but really it’s been just under the surface for the past week “You guys tore an animal to pieces less than an hour ago! Speaking of which; brush your damn teeth man!”

Chris breathes into his hand, smells it, & grimaces “Sorry ‘bout that, bro.”

“Hey, we were hungry.” Jess protests, leaning up from Mike’s chest “What; did you want us to starve?”

“Of course not!” Josh exclaims immediately. The last thing he wants is to cause them more pain. It’s just… it’s just

“I wanted you to eat the food that’s in the fridge” Josh looks around at all of them, but no one seems to want to make eye contact with him, so he continues “When you’re hungry, you get something from the kitchen or order takeout, like…”

 _‘Like normal people’_ is what Josh stops himself from saying, because even though his friends are all reassuring smiles & swear that they’re totally adjusted to their new selves, Josh isn’t stupid. His friends need his support right now, not for him to keep pointing out how different they are from the people who came up the mountain. But they really don’t make it easy for him.

“Like you used to” he says instead, but he can still feel everyone else in the room recoil. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Josh adopts a gentler tone of voice “Look guys, I get that these new instincts of yours are hard to ignore; & I definitely know a thing or two about being fucked up in the head.”

There’s that recoil again, but damn it, this is one point that Josh needs to drive home!

“But back home you won’t be able to hunt deer, or elk, or whatever, whenever you feel like it, because there aren’t any in the town. But do you know what there’s plenty of? People; helpless, unassuming people whom you could rip apart in seconds if you went into frenzy. I’m sorry but if we are ever going back down the mountain, then you need to have a handle on that.”

For a few minutes all that can be heard is the wind blowing outside of the cabin. So it comes as a surprise when Sam suddenly speaks up.

“You know we wouldn’t hurt a person.”

The worst part is that Josh can tell that she believes it. He walks over to the table & sits on the floor next to Sam, positioning himself so that he can face everyone in the room.

“I know that you guys wouldn’t hurt **_me_**.”

Not even that was entirely true.

\--------------------------------

When the seven of them had first… come back, they weren’t even close to human; their skin was gray & stretched over their bones like wrapping paper, & long sharp teeth that protruded from awkward angles out of their lipless mouths. Josh couldn’t recognize them & they clearly, hopefully, didn’t recognize him. He ran of course, & they caught him, of course; they seemed to know the mines much better than he did. One of them (looking back, it was probably Emily; she gets these blue-grey stripes around her arms when she morphs) hauled him into the air by the throat & started to squeeze.

Josh tried to pull open the vice-like grip constricting his airways, but it was no use; all he could do was plead for his life.

“Stop” he managed to rasp out with what little oxygen he had left, & surprisingly enough, the creature eased its grip enough for him to desperately suck in gulps of air.

It’s then that he noticed that its milky white eyes were fixed on his face as if studying him. Risking a look around he saw that all of the creatures were fixated on him but none of them made a move towards him.

_He’d told the one choking him to stop, & they all did…_

“Put… Put me down?”

He landed on his ass with an oomph when the creature dropped him, but before he could even think about getting up & running, it had him boxed in with its long arms. But still, it made no moves to hurt him, none of them did.

They seemed to be obeying his commands for some reason, but they didn’t seem willing to let him go if he doesn’t specifically ask for it. So…

“Leave me alone.”

\-------------------------------

Josh knows that they couldn’t hurt him, for the most part they do whatever he tells them to, at least while in their wendigo forms; their human forms & half-morphed forms had a lot more willpower but Josh does notice that they tend to side with him on decisions a lot. Not always, obviously.

What Josh doesn’t know is whether or not they would want to hurt him if given the opportunity. He hasn’t forgotten the role that he played on the night everybody died &, even though no one’s brought it up even once, he’s certain that the others haven’t forgotten either. Who’s to say that those feelings aren’t just hidden under a lid, boiling up until it bursts in his face? He’s afraid to find out.

\-------------------------------

So apparently they weren’t as obedient as Josh thought. And they certainly didn’t seem to like his suggestion of leaving him.

The other six stalked menacingly towards them while the one on top of him lowered its head until its snarling face was just inches above his own. As he stared into those dead white eyes he finds himself thinking of Hannah, of Beth, of all his friends & family whose lives were claimed by this damn mountain. He couldn’t save his sisters, he couldn’t save his friends & he’d put them through hell before they died. How could he have thought it would all be okay in the end, that they would all be laughing the next day because it was just a prank?

It was just a prank! That was the only justification he’d needed to delude himself; but it had seemed perfectly acceptable in his head up until now. It was just a prank, like what they did to Hannah… _Hannah_ … _Beth_ … _everyone_ …

Josh didn’t even realize that he was crying until he felt bony fingers wiping the tears from his cheeks. He looks up to see all of the monsters gathered around him, the hostility in their eyes replaced with, what almost seemed like concern.

Unfortunately, to Josh, that concern looked a lot more like judgment.

“What do you bastards want with me?” he snarls, his frustration growing “Why don’t you just kill me already, huh? You were all gung-ho about it a few minutes ago!”

The creatures started screeching in his face but at this point Josh was beyond being scared; he got as much momentum as he could from his position & punched the creature above him right in its grotesque jaw.

Immediately he felt himself being dragged out from under the creature by his ankles. Once he was suspended, two more of the creatures each grabbed one of his arms.

_Drawn & quartered, huh?_

Gruesome; but he’d been prepared for gruesome.

He shut his eyes in anticipation. But there was nothing; no tugging, no pain, nothing but the sensation of being carried. Opening his eyes once more, he saw that’s exactly what was happening. Three of the creatures were carrying him like furniture while the other four seemed to be leading them somewhere. He struggled & screamed at the top of his lungs but none of them were acknowledging him anymore aside from tightening their grips on his limbs.

Josh had screamed himself hoarse after several minutes & so he spent several more minutes in silence. They had left the mines; that much was obvious from the wind & the hints of dawn breaking past the horizon. Soon enough, however, the path began to become familiar to him & he realized where they were taking him.

“Wh-why are you taking me here? Why don’t you just fuckin’ kill me already?!” Still he got no answer.

Soon enough, they reached their destination. The Washington lodge always looked imposing, but to Josh, right then it was downright terrifying; it was the place of his, everyone’s, betrayals. The jagged pieces of the broken door looked like a monstrous maw looking to swallow him whole & dump him in a pit of their collective guilt.

“No… no please, don’t take me in there, please!” he started to sob, & even though the creatures finally turned their attention to him again, none of them stopped.

Without warning he was placed down onto the ground, but Josh was too lost in his own fears to notice. Curling up into a ball, he cried out for his friends, for his sisters, for himself.

He did finally notice when one of the creatures pulled him up into a sitting position against its chest & wrapped its arms around him. From this new position, Josh could feel just how emaciated these things really were, & just how cold; but despite all of that, he didn’t feel uncomfortable.

One by one, they huddled together, with him in the center & no way to escape should he be brave enough to try. But Josh didn’t want to escape anymore; he didn’t even want to die, he was just… tired. So he let himself drift off to sleep, the heartbeats around him synchronized with his own in a sort of hypnotic metronome.

\------------------------------------------------

The mood in the room is bleak. Josh left for a walk about ten minutes ago to clear his head, leaving everyone else to really think about some things they’d preferred to ignore up until now.

“Guys…” Ashley speaks up, only to be met with groans from half the room.

“Don’t say it Ash” Chris pleads from his spot underneath her.

“But Chris, what if Josh is right?” Ashley argues “We’ve pretty much holed ourselves up in this place since we got this way, & we haven’t seen any other people. What if, when we get back into town, we can’t handle it?”

“But Ash” Chris interjects “we’ve been surrounded by animals for over a week & we’ve never once lost control, even when we hunt we still keep our minds.”

“Are you sure about that Chris?”

Even though she drew all the attention towards herself, Sam’s own gave is fixed on the surface of the coffee table as she continues.

“You guys know that I’m a vegan.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think you can really call yourself that anymore Sammy.” Jess answers sympathetically.

“I know.” Sam responds with a sigh “But I’ve always thought that killing animals is disgusting & wrong, & I still think that. But when I feel hungry; when that little voice in my head, in all of our heads, says it’s time to hunt; it’s as if all my problems with killing animals, killing in general, just fade away. Can you guys honestly tell me that it’s never felt wrong to you?”

“This whole situation is fucked up Sam.” Jessica replies “And yeah, it’s scary to think about how dangerous we could be, but that’s why we can’t let ourselves think about it like that. Josh said that we have to start acting like our old selves, but if anything is keeping us from getting back to our old lives, it’s the fear that we won’t be able to handle it. That’s why we promised to help each other through this; because we knew that without a cure we would have to learn to live with this & still lead normal lives.”

Suddenly Matt moves away from the wall & makes his way towards the kitchen, once there, he can be heard rummaging through the fridge.

“Matt?” Sam calls out “You okay in there?”

“I’m fine” he calls back nonchalantly “I’m trying to decide what to make for dinner.”

Emily can’t help but snort “We’re kinda in the middle of something, big guy; I think your stomach can wait.”

Matt walks back into the room & plops himself down on the arm of the sofa next to Mike & Jess.

“It’s not just for me it’s for all of us.” Getting only questioning stares in return, Matt continues “It’s like Josh said; when we leave we won’t be able to run or hunt or shift like we do up here, but for the past week we’ve done nothing to prepare ourselves for that. Not only that, but it’s like Sam said, we just give into these Wendigo instincts whenever they pop up, but that’s gotta stop.”

I don’t think one dinner is going to solve our problems Matt.” Chris points out.

“I know” Matt replies “but Coach always used to say _‘A bundle of sticks can break through any stone’_. He had a habit of mixing his metaphors, but what he basically meant was that if we work together as a team to get through a problem, then nothing can stop us. But it’ll probably take some time.”

 “And how much time would that be Matt?” asks Emily “Because whether we like it or not, we _can’t_ stay on this mountain forever. Classes start back up in a few weeks  & I seriously doubt our parents won’t have any questions about us extending our little getaway _**again**_.”

It was true, their three-day foray into the Blackwoods had already stretched out past a week, with the only valid excuse they could give their parents being that the trip had brought up old memories of Hannah & Beth, & that they weren’t ready to leave just yet. Technically it wasn’t a total lie.

“Plus, we’re lucky that the rescue crew I managed to contact never showed up” Emily continues “Those assholes totally left us for dead!”

A poor choice of words, as the room is immediately beset by a grim silence, & after a few moments Chris is more than eager to break it.

“So, by my count, we’ve got three votes for leaving” he gestures to himself, Jessica, & Emily “& three against” now gesturing to Ashley, Sam, & Matt.

“Josh thinks we should stay too” Ashley points out.

“But Josh isn’t here right now.” Chris responds “Besides, that still puts us at only seven votes.”

And just like that, all eyes are on Mike.

Gracefully, Mike rises from the couch, rubbing his hands together.

“So, we’ve heard a lot of different arguments today, & each one brings up a valid point”

Emily groans “We’re not holding a student council meeting Munroe, get on with it.”

Mike sighs in exasperation, silently thanking God that Emily never was on his student council “As I was saying, the main argument seems to be whether or not we can put aside these new instincts of ours when around other people, & basically not go on a killing spree. But I think the answer is pretty obvious here.”

“Well” Sam says “don’t leave us in suspense.”

“We need a test; one of us goes back into town with Josh for a day. If nothing happens, then nothing happens; if that person flips out, Josh will be able to get them under control. Either way, we’ll have our answer.”

“But what if Josh isn’t enough?” asks Matt “What if someone seriously gets hurt?”

“At some point we’re gonna have to put ourselves in this situation; this way we’re minimizing the risk. Besides, Josh being there is just a contingency; it’s up to us to keep ourselves under control. But if none of us are confident enough in themselves to take that risk then I guess we already have our answer, don’t we?”

When no one answers Mike is prepared to call the meeting adjourned, when someone speaks up.

“I’ll do it”

“Are you sure Chris?” Ashley asks, the worry evident in her voice.

“I’m part of the group that just wants to go home, back to our families, back to our lives. Besides, Josh is my best friend he’ll be able to bring me back no problem if anything happens.”

“So, does everyone agree to the plan?” Mike waits for a few moments, but one by one everyone raises their hand in consent “Great, we’ll fill Josh in when he gets back.”

“In the meantime, I could use some help in the kitchen, I’m making lasagna.” Matt announces.

“Oh” Chris exclaims, hopping up from the loveseat “I can make my mom’s famous garlic bread!”

“I can help” Jess says, following him into the kitchen.

“And I can make sure Jess doesn’t burn the kitchen down.” Emily retorts.

“God, between you & my dads I’m never gonna hear the end of this, am I? It wasn’t even a big fire.”

“I was there, & yes it was.”

With those four working on dinner Sam, Ashley, & Mike are left alone.

“I hope Josh is alright” Sam says to no one in particular, but she gets a response anyway.

“I think he just needs time to himself” Ashley says “I’m sure this can’t be easiest situation for him either.”

Mike picks up the remote & points it at the flat-screen mounted on the wall, but doesn’t immediately turn it on. When he feels the girls’ questioning gaze on him he puts the remote back down.

“Josh feels guilty about what he did to us, & he should.” he can sense Ashley’s flinch at the memories of being trapped in one of Josh’s saw contraptions “But he isn’t responsible for what happened to us, although he probably blames himself, like he did after Hanna & Beth disappeared. Now by some bizarre twist of fate he’s pretty much our supernatural babysitter & he’s probably driving himself crazy trying to do right by us.”

“So what can we do?” Sam wonders aloud.

“Hopefully we can start by proving that he doesn’t need to look after us anymore.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

TBC

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all liked this chapter, & if you did, or just have questions, don't be afraid to comment. I'll try to get the next chapter out as soon as I can.


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